How to used an Android device with a shattered screen

This screen is not just cracked, it’s devastated. We can all agree that you’re not going to be carrying this around with you anymore, but it might still be useful in other endeavors. [Mr Westie] wanted to use it for the camera which is undamaged. The issue is how do you control an Android device with a broken screen?

He knew there are apps out there that let you control your device remotely. But these still depend on you being able to install and launch the program. He found he could get the image from the screen on his computer using a package called Screencast. It runs on your computer and doesn’t need to be installed on the phone, but it will require a rooted phone and the user must click to authorize root access. He got around that hangup by pushing keypress commands to the phone via ADB. The only problem left is if debugging mode is not enable.

I encountered a similar problem. I have an Atrix with a broken screen (OK digitizer) with a LapDock that a friend gave me. I factory-restored it but then it needed on-screen prompts to set up. I ended up finding a bypass for the setup, and did it blindly by taping an image of the keyboard over the phone. It worked! Link to my endeavors: http://forum.xda-developers.com/member.php?u=529087

I still dunno what I’ll do with such a wonky setup. It’s unrooted, and the performance of the screen rendered on the lapdock isn’t good (fullscreening the phone preview makes The Impossible Game go half speed and out of sync for example), and while I have a sort of tablet sized Android device, it’s really just the phone’s screen (and huge interface) stretched (not rendered at) to 1366×768 without any touch capability.

The previous poster didn’t say they were throwing money at it to get someone else to fix it, they said it’s easier to just replace it and I agree. Amazon carries most brands and it’s not tough for someone with a little skill to swap the screen, digitizer & LCD on a phone. I had an obliterated IPhone and for about $30 including tax & shipping I got the parts. It only took a couple of hours to disassemble, clean & repair it and its been good for about a year now.

many phones have fused screens (LCD, digi, and glass glued together) and can cost upwards of 150 bucks just for parts. If there is important data to recover the best way I have found is to make an image of the phone and load it into the Android SDK to run Virtual Machine of the device

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.webkey is the link for the market, needs a rooted phone, but not only does it let you control it with a browser, but it also traverses NAT, and allows you to access files, run local commands, turn on/off gps, even chat with the holder of the phone.

hay aaron you might be able to help me. I have the mobile G the screen is totally smash but I can still get it to go to the camera zero way that I could rewire the video to go to my TV so I could use the phone as a security cam. The phone only has to be like 2 feet away from the TV.

I had this happen with a Captivate. Cracked LCD and glass. Got it for free, screen replacement will be ~$100!

One thing I remember trying to get ADB enabled was to set persist.service.adb.enable=1 somehow. I believe I was able to flash a custom recovery, get into ADB Shell from Recovery, and push the flag to the device somehow and boot up to ADB.

Prereqs: Rooted & adb on (THIS SHOULD BE THE FIRST THING YOU DO ON EVERY SINGLE PHONE FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE IF YOU DIDNT YOU CAN DO IT WITHOUT THE SCREEN BY FLASHING AN SBF. single binary files are not dangerous at all… not at all……………………….. but making one or finding can be very hard. Next time root your device and dont stop untill you acheive that. tptb cant beat hackers because root access is inherent to hard access. (hard access=you can touch the device physically)